The Secret To Independent Play

So first, I just wanna start by saying we know how important play is.

Play is the job of children.

Children need to play in order to learn how to process their day, in order to learn skills like leadership and how to be creative and how to think outside of the box and how to problem solve.

There is really, like outside of sleep and food, nothing quite as important for children as having time to play.

So play is so important.

There's things that we can do to help our children play, but they do innately have an ability to know how to play.

So really it's about creating the conditions, creating the environment where they're able to play.

Now, before we get too deep into it, as you know, the relationship we have with our child's the most important thing.

So when our child knows that we love them, we're right here with them, but, you know, we're just in the kitchen, let's say, making some food, or we're in the other room, but we're here and we love them, and we know that they're capable of playing, that helps.

And really, what research shows us is that independent play comes out of this relationship that children have with their parents.

When they feel safe, they play.

When they feel loved and nurtured, and they don't have to, like, cling and cry and whine in the hopes that they can get your attention, like they know they're gonna have time with you later, this also helps them play.

And we've done some episodes on play before, which we'll also link below.

Now, here's a few ways, though, that like outside of making sure we have this relationship with our kid, here's some things that we can do to actually encourage independent play.

So first is something called an invitation to play.

So an invitation to play is actually about how we arrange the environment in our home so it invites our child to want to play.

I used to...

I don't know if you're an OG Our Mama Village follower.

This was way back in 2020.

When I was home every day with my daughter during the pandemic, I would always post these ideas, these invitations to play, and basically, it's just setting out a couple things for your child that they can stumble across and start to play with.

So for example, what I would do when I was a stay-at-home mom during this time is I would put out Play-Doh.

I would put out some pipe cleaners.

I might put out some, like, googly eyes, and I would just leave it on the kitchen table, and my three-year-old would just, like, kind of stumble across it and be like, "Oh, what is this?" And all of a sudden she'd sit down.

She would start playing with the toys because they were accessible.

They were right there, and there wasn't too many options where she became overwhelmed.